Stay In The Real-Life Grand Budapest Hotel

The luxury hotel tucked away in the Czech town of Karlovy Vary isn’t the actual hotel where the film was shot, but the hapless romantic/lover of old ladies and poetry-reciting concierge Monsieur Gustave and his humble protégé Moustafa would’ve felt plenty at home running the place.

Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures

While the Grandhotel Pupp isn’t nearly as pink as its cinematic stand-in, it does have a history as complex as the film’s grand hotel. In 1896, the Pupp family enlisted a cadre of Viennese architects to transform the building into a bastion of Neo-Baroque style, and elements of the Pupp’s architecture, décor, and old-world charm were infused into its on-screen version.

As you enter the Pupp’s grand lobby, notice the walls are hung with opulent paintings like the one at the center of all the drama in Anderson’s movie; Not to give away too much, but there’s a family dispute, and a mystery, and it all involves a painting.

Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures

If you arrived at the Grandhotel Pupp in 1932, it’s highly unlikely that Ralph Fiennes would have showed you to your room. A concierge wearing similar attire/mustache, however, almost certainly would have.

As in the fictional hotel, each room at the Pupp is uniquely designed (albeit without wallpaper as garish as in the film); some — like the lavish Imperial Apartment — even boast an elegant marble bath.

In real life, you get one of the Pupp’s Aquai water massage beds. As Karlovy Vary is the Czech Republic’s go-to spa town, the hotel’s extensive spa includes an indoor pool with underwater tunes, steam rooms, a Finnish sauna, ice fountain, and a flower bath — so you know even the flowers are clean.

After your bath/swim — a traditional Budapest ritual, and now a party one — head to the Grandrestaurant Pupp for some traditional Czech fare. In TGBH, it’s over dinner in a similarly empty dining room that Jude Law learns all about the inimitable Gustave from M. Moustafa.